In one of the most surprising turn of events in recent poker history, legendary female poker player Annie Duke has won the 2010 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship. She bested an elite field that consisted of many of the biggest names in the poker community, including Erik Seidel, who she beat in the final round with a 2-1 win. For her victory, Duke scored a cool $500,000 prize purse, with Seidel taking home $250,000 with his runner-up finish.

Most viewers I imagined were surprised to see a female player make it through what is always a heavily male-dominated tournament, but Anne seemed to have the luck of the cards, and the schedule, on her side. Looking back on the opponents she faced, Duke definitely did not have the toughest draw in the tournament. Her toughest opponent was arguably Andy Bloch in round 1, but from there she then went on to play against numerous players that have just recently entered the spotlight due to their WSOP success including Jerry Yang, Darvin Moon and Dennis Phillips. While all of those players have proven they have talent, there’s no way they represented the same challenge that would’ve been provided by players the caliber of Phil Ivey, Daniel Negraneau or Barry Greenstein.

Seidel seemed to have a tougher draw of opponents overall, netting Peter Eastgate, Scotty Nguyen, Huck Seed and David Williams, which is why it was doubly impressive to see him progress all the way to the finals considering that in the previous five years of the NBC Heads-Up Championship he never progressed out of round 1.

Duke has now racked up a total of $2,247.824 in career winnings and can now add this marquee victory to her already impressive resume that includes a WSOP bracelet win in 2004 and first place honors at the inaugural WSOP Tournament of Champions.

Here are the final results from the event:

Final Results:
1: Annie Duke — $500,000
2: Erik Seidel — $250,000
3: Scotty Nguyen — $125,000
3: Dennis Phillips — $125,000
5: Jerry Yang — $75,000
5: Doyle Brunson — $75,000
5: Jason Mercier — $75,000
5: Peter Eastgate — $75,000
9: Paul Wasicka — $25,000
9: Eli Elezra — $25,000
9: Annette Obrestad — $25,000
9: Barry Greenstein — $25,000
9: Gabe Kaplan — $25,000
9: Phil Laak — $25,000
9: Chris Moneymaker — $25,000
9: Jamie Gold — $25,000

Armed Gunmen Rob European Poker Tour Berlin Event

You don’t often hear about too many dangerous things going on at poker tournaments these days, but a scary situation unfolded on day 4 at the European Poker Tour Belin €5,000 no-limit hold’em main event when four armed men burst into the tournament registration area of the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The tournament room was immediately evacuated until security deemed the situation safe enough to allow the players back in, only to find that tables, chairs and chips had been thrown all over the place.

The staff of the EPT, under the direction of Director Thomas Kremser, worked quickly to restore order to the tournament and eventually got the event back up and running with 20 players remaining in the tournament. The €1,000 no-limit hold’em event, which was also disturbed by the incident, was eventually canceled as a result. Cameras from EPT Live captured some of the commotion, but quickly went offline went they learned what was happening.

“An armed robbery by six men took place today at EPT Berlin,” said EPT spokesperson Kristy Thompson. “Nobody was seriously injured. We hope to re-start all events at 4pm local time. A police investigation is under way. If you have video footage or photographs that could help the police, please contact the EPT organizers as soon as possible.

The tournament resumed after a few hours and a police investigation is now under way. The tournament is taking place on the first floor of the Grand Hyatt Hotel at Marlene-Dietrich-Platz and is being held by SPIELBANK Berlin Casino.

The police are working closely with the EPT and SPIELBANK Berlin. Police are asking anyone who has information, video footage or photographs that might aid the investigation to contact them.”

The highly anticipated poker reality show that debuted on the G4 network has decided to cancel the show for a second season. The show debuted on August 16, 2009 and ran for ten episodes. The concept was intriguing and had the poker community talking about the four young poker stars.

Jay “Krantz” Rosenkrantz, Dani Stern, Emil Patel, and Brian Roberts were the four young online players who were chosen for the series. The concept was simple. They had two months to make $2 million collectively. Each week the one who made the least amount of money would have to do some embarrassing task.

Anticipation for the series was high among the poker community, but ratings fizzled. The first two weeks of the challenge was positive as the group made $200,000 towards their goal. However, week 3 marked the inevitable downswing that ultimately kept the group from reaching their $2 million dollar mark. In the end they only ended up making $676,000.

Aside from the fact that the group missed their mark by a mile, the group failed to be dynamic enough to keep viewers intrigued. Interest came from watching how young online poker players cope with winning and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, it was difficult for the audience to connect with any members of the group and some of the non-poker sequences felt forced and cheesy.

Rosenkrantz said about his experience, “I learned a lot doing 2 Months, $2 Million…not the least of which was what people really liked about it and what didn’t work. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to let that experience work for us.”

In November 2009 Patrick Antonius won the biggest pot in online poker history against the unnamed Isidur1. In a $500/$1,000 Pot Limit Omaha game both players were sitting over $400,000 deep. Preflop action was fairly standard, but the turn brought fireworks.

When the ace of diamonds hit the turn both players raised and re-raised until they were all in. The total in the pot was an impressive $878,959. Antonius and Isildur1 both had aces up with a river draw. Antonius had a flush draw and gutshot straight draw, and Isildur1 had a gutshot and a chance at a higher two pair.

As it happened, the 8d came on the riving which gave Antonius his gutshot and a massive pot. The session continued with Antonius having a $2.5 million lead on Isildur1. Surely this will not be the last news worthy hand played between the two competitors.

Previous to this hand, the record breaking online pot was between Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Di “Urindanger” Dang. In October 2008 the two hot shots played an exploding eight hour session. It was a six handed game with “La Key U”, Di “Urindanger” Dang, Guy “elmariachimacho” Laliberte, Gus Hansen, Tom “durrrr” Dwan, and John Juanda.

Dang had opened for $3,000 with “La Key U” folding in front. Laliberte flat called, and Dwan raised to $16,300 in the cutoff. Juanda and Hansen folded leaving Dang to re-raise to $45,000. Laliberte folded and Dang called. On a 5c 9h 4h board the action exploded leaving Dang all in for his last $367,671. Dwan called with Kc Kd and Dang showed Ac Ad. The turn and river bricked for Dwan and Dang scooped a monster for a total of $723, 938.

For the last month or so, the topic of intrastate online poker regulation has become a real hot subject in the poker industry, with numerous states expressing interest in taking matters into their own hands and trying to legalize poker for their residents, instead of waiting for a country-wide federal decision to be made. Now, it has been confirmed that Florida introduced its own intrastate online poker bill, having filed it on Tuesday.

The bill, titled HB 1441, The Internet Poker Consumer Protection and Revenue Generation Act of 2010, is designed to “create a framework for the state to regulate Internet poker sites that can ensure consumer protections and additional revenue to the state by authorizing, implementing, and creating a licensing and regulatory structure and system of Internet poker.”

The bill was filed by Florida Rep. Joseph Abruzzo, with reports claming that approx. 900,000 Florida residents gamble online and that intrastate regulation could bring $200 million a year to Florida. Currently the state is facing a $3.2 billion deficit and plans on charging each online poker site a $500,000 fee plus 20% of its monthly gross receipts if the bill is passed. The bill states that all online players under this bill would have to be 21-years-old and physically inside Florida’s borders in order to play.

The bill states that “Internet poker hub operator must register players and establish player accounts prior to play” and that accounts “may be established in person, by mail or telephone, or by any electronic means.”

If approved, the bill would go into effect on July 1st, 2010. The poker community is still waiting for one state to be successful with its intrastate bill, as it would make it much easier for other states to feed off that success and get their own regulations pushed through. The question still remains, however, if poker players are going to be happened with the greatly diminished number of players that will be available for them to play against, since intrastate laws require that online players be forced to play against only others from within the same state.

Poker has just passed another milestone in proving that it is not just a gambling game. The International Mind Sports Association has just announced that they intend to accept the International Federation of Poker as a member at their next meeting. This is huge for poker because if the IOC accepts poker then the International Olympic Committee with automatically accepts poker on this list of skill games. Other games that have already been accepted are chess, bridge, checkers, and go.

This is an amazing accomplishment in the fight to bring some legitimacy to poker. Chess has long had the notoriety of being a skillful game that has gained the respect of many all over the world. While poker has risen substantially over the last several years in popularity, the game continues to face legal and social persecution. With poker being hailed on the game level as other skill games there is a chance that the face of poker will change in the near future.

“Poker is not like other casino games. It’s a social game where people are playing against each other, not the house, and a game where skill plays a bigger role than luck. There are 120 to 150 million poker players in the world and we deserve this recognition,” says IFP president Anthony Holden.

Although poker will probably never be seen at the Olympic Games, the decision has other implications. As many courts are evaluating poker as a gambling or skill based game, the IOC’s recognition might be used to further prove the case that poker is widely accepted as a skill based game.

A German man, named Michael Olaf Schuett has recently been arrested for allegedly transferring over $70 million in online poker winnings to 23,000 people. Schuett started processing these online transactions to over 23,000 people from his own home.

Authorities were alerted when large checks started coming in from an unknown company. MCM Capital Management, owned by Schuett, was the company issuing the checks. As checks continued to surface, banks began to question the origin.

FedEx employees also began to question Schuett as a high number of packages were being delivered from his home. According to a federal complaint, “Federal Express employees became suspicious of Schuett’s activity when Schuett began mailing over 150 parcels per week. FedEx employees opened several of the parcels and determined that each contained a check.”

It has been determined that Schuett had over 40 bank accounts that he was using to send and accept wire transfers for the purpose of facilitating his money transfer business. Some of the banks that he used were Bank of America, Wachovia, and Shamrock.

Schuett had multiple businesses which he used as fronts to carry out his money transferring operations. Some of the business names he used was MCM Capital Management Corp., MI Global Inc., South Naples Escrow Co., and Payment Services Group Inc. When asked what he did for a living, Schuett would say he was a real estate investor.

Schuett is now being held at Lee County jail without bond for money laundering, failing to register as a money transfer business, and other violations. Agents are executing search warrants to seize his computers, documents, and assets acquired through illegal online gambling activities.

Ever since online poker started getting hit with strict rules and policies in the United States, the Poker Players Alliance has been leading the charge to make these online card rooms legal again for US players. The PPA has always wanted to regulate poker across the entire country, but instead now finds that more than likely the process will happen one state at a time, with California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Iowa all considering separate intrastate poker regulations.

“The idea is not something that the PPA opposes,” PPA Executive Director John Pappas said. “However, we are very concerned what intrastate poker means for the online poker player and the online poker market today.”

The major concern the PPA has with intrastate poker regulation is the fear that these new laws will force players within these states to play on online sites that only allow competition from that one particular state, removing the freedom to play against players from all over the world. A number of gaming corporations in California for example have already announced their intentions to form their own online card rooms in the instance that intrastate poker is approved.

Pappas believes that each individual state would make more money by allowing for an open market when it comes to regulation, allowing customers to play against players from other areas. If restricted purely to those that live within the state, Pappas fears that these new card rooms will not be able to reach critical mass, severely limiting the amount of gaming options presented to the card players and limiting the potential revenue for the state.

“Let me be clear: We support licensing and regulation. We think it’s achievable,” said Pappas in a February hearing in Florida. “Our preference is to do it at the federal level, but if we are going to go down to the state level like you guys are contemplating here (in Florida), and like they’re contemplating in California, competition has to be key.”

When traveling to play poker events, cash games, and tournaments there are a few things besides good play you need to bring in your bag of tricks. Below are some tips for preparing to travel for poker.

Make A Plan
If you are planning to play a series of tournaments, take a look at the tournament schedule and get an idea of what events you are planning to play. If time allows, try to schedule in a day to take a break and enjoy the sites or do something outside of the poker room. This will help you clear your mind after a few long days of tournament play.

Choose A Hotel
There are a few things to consider when choosing a hotel. To save on rooms, get a few buddies together and split the cost of the room. Booking in advance will also save a ton of money and allow you to lock in the best rate. Also consider the proximity of the hotel to the poker room. If you are playing tournaments you will have to consider how long it will take you get ready and get to the tournament before it starts. Sometimes convenience is worth the extra cost to stay closer to where you will be spending most of your time.

Load Up On Music
This is a great time to download all that music you’ve been putting off adding to your Ipod. New tunes are a great way to entertain yourself while you are grinding it out at the tables. Make sure you get all your music together before you leave so you don’t get stuck without it when you get to the hotel. Even though the hotel might say they have internet, sometimes it runs so slow it is difficult even surf the web.

Poker Attire
Bring your lucky hoodie, shoes, socks, underwear, etc. Part of playing good poker is being comfortable and having confidence. There is no way you can play your best poker if those new jeans that cute sales girl sold you are smothering you while you’re trying to bluff someone. Bring what is comfortable and warm enough to withstand the breezy poker room.

The online poker forums have been buzzing with rumors of just who is going to be invited to this year’s NBC Heads-Up Poker Championship, an event that has become one of the more prestigious in poker. There are some names that every year you know will be included, such as Phil Ivey, Doyle Brunson, Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Hellmuth, but NBC does have a tendency to mix things up and throw in a few players you wouldn’t expect to see. Finally, the company has released the official list for this year’s Heads-Up Championship, which as in 2009 is made up of 64 players.

Twenty two of the names on the list were automatically qualified and given an invite to the game due to accomplishments they racked up last season, including WSOP Champion Joe Cada. Two players who qualified but will not be playing are Jeffrey Lisandro (who was the WSOP Player of the Year) and Barry Shulman (who won the WSOP Europe main event).

Another high-profile dropout came from poker godfather Doyle Brunson, who was reserved a spot but decided not to participate. He spoke on the matter in one of his online blogs stated: “I’ve got an invitation to play in a big TV tournament and immediately afterwards is the NBC Heads Up Championship. I’ll have to bow out of all these tournaments because there is no use playing unless you are at your best. The competition has gotten so good you need to feel good physically as well as mentally to have a chance to win.”